In an era where music production is often click-track paced, Tool are adamant about keeping their rhythm tracks as organic as possible.
Drummer Danny Carey revealed that the band has never recorded with a click and explains why Tool opted for an old-school “live in the studio” approach to recording drums in a new interview with YouTuber. Rick Beato (as transcribed by Metal injection).
“We're going to a big room to capture the drums…We'll go somewhere like Ocean Way or O'Henry, somewhere that has a million dollars' worth of microphones and a big, beautiful room,” Carey said. “And then our goal is to just capture the drum tracks and play them all together. We'll agree on a tempo and start clicking in our heads. And then as soon as I tell it, we’ll just be playing.”
To be fair, the complexities of Tool's music, with its progressive changes in tempo and time signatures, would be almost impossible to program with a click, and the results would be quite rigid and robotic.
“I've never followed a Tool song to a click,” Carey admitted. “I think a lot of it is because a lot of Tool songs have very strange time signatures, and it would be hard to program a click or something, who knows… But I think it's okay if things speed up or slow down a little bit. . She breathes a little. Most of the stuff I grew up listening to, like all that old progressive stuff, you listen to it. It's funny how sensitive you become to tempo changes after being inundated with click perfection for all these last few years.”
While Carey admits that click tempos “take away the magic,” he understands the current generation's desire for digital precision and hopes Tool's music can still exist in that realm.
“…I hope other people don’t consider it wrong,” Carey said of the slight human imperfections that come with organic tracking. “I think you can feel that way, probably young children, because they are so conditioned to everything being perfect, that it can be difficult for them to listen to classical music or things that breathe. It's another world, that's for sure.”
Carey and Tool will take their well-oiled live act across the UK and Europe during the remaining dates of their 2024 tour in May (get tickets here).
Meanwhile, Carey will also play drums alongside Adrian Belew, Tony Levin and Steve Vai as the supergroup BEAT, paying tribute to the music of King Crimson on an extensive fall tour (tickets available here).
Watch Rick Beato's interview with Carey below.
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